Such devices contain power-consuming electronic components that generate heat and therefore have to be cooled. Operating temperatures that are too high endanger, for example, the reliability of microprocessors or memory chips and shorten their service life.
Conventionally, cooling is effected by a blower or fan and heat-dissipating structures such as, for example, cooling fins, air-guiding hoods or compact heat-conductive metal structures in the immediate vicinity of individual chips. An air-guiding hood is a molded component that spatially restricts the air flow and thus controls it in a more specific manner, whether by channelling the exhaust air away from the components to be cooled or channelling the incoming air towards the components to be cooled.
Because of the in some cases very complex geometries of the optimized air ducts, the elements that guide the air are customarily produced in the form of compact injection molded parts of plastics material, the shaping being carried out with the aid of special plastics processing tools (molds etc.). This produces one-piece air-guiding hoods and shaped air-guiding parts tailored to the geometries and desired air-flow patterns in the computer.
But, as the internal construction in the computer becomes increasingly complex and/or as the desired air-flow patterns become increasingly refined, such a conventional flow-guiding hood becomes too expensive and too time-consuming to produce.
It could therefore be helpful to provide a flow-guiding hood that can be produced at significantly lower cost with the efficiency substantially unchanged.